Bits and Pieces
by Featherz
Summary: A few mini-fics that are too short and/or too unfinished to be standalones. Fourteenth fic: "Still not your housekeeper!"
1. A Cold Winter's Day

John stamps most of the snow from his boots off onto the doormat and sheds his hat, scarf, gloves and heavy-duty overcoat reluctantly before dashing upstairs to get a fire going in the flat.

"I looked for milk but Sainsbury's are all out, looks like people've been panic buy…ing… Er. Sherlock?"

Sherlock is sitting cross-legged on the sofa, still as a statue, fingertips steepled under his chin with an expression of Deep Thought on his face. He's clad in just a shirt and trousers and shows no sign of cold, despite the thermostat showing minus one degrees when John checks it in disbelief.

"Good God," John explodes in a mixture of frustration and concern, "It's below freezing in here! Get some bloody clothes on!"

"Not now, John," His flatmate says in a distant voice, "I'm thinking."

John notices three nicotine patches stuck on Sherlock's left arm. He also notices that Sherlock's fingers are very white. _Losing circulation, the idiot_, the doctor inside him notes.

"Right, come on."

Sherlock allows himself to be frogmarched into John's bedroom and forcibly clad in what must be every spare jumper John owns, thick walking socks jammed unceremoniously onto his feet and a horrible knitted scarf wrapped around his neck. The only item he takes offence to is the matching bobble hat, swatting it away and snapping that he can't _think_ with all that wool blocking his head up.

John takes Sherlock's cold pale hands and begins to massage them between his own, rubbing them back and forth until a little colour begins to seep back into the fingertips.

And suddenly clarity dawns.

"I've got it!" Sherlock exclaims, snatching his hands back and patting feverishly at his pockets. "Blast, where's my phone gone? Send a text for me." And as John gets out his phone, "Why am I wearing three of your jumpers?"

"Because you- I-" The doctor sighs in resignation. "You looked cold."

"Oh." Sherlock says. "Now, send a text saying these words _exactly_ to the number I'm about to dictate…"

John rolls his eyes privately. The day Sherlock thanks him for something other than saving his life will be the day that John Watson can die a happy man.

* * *

><p>I seem to have done this for quite a few of my fics - but I was looking through an old notebook and found some Sherlock fics that I'd written. None of them are complete (well, I suppose you could call this one a very short story) but I quite like them. I'm never going to develop them so I'm just going to upload them into this little 'bits and pieces' fic, similar to what Atlin Merrick has done.<p>

Characters belong to Conan Doyle/BBC Sherlock team, none of them belong to me! (*sob*)


	2. Hic!

"I've got the –hic!- hiccups, if that wasn't perfectly obvious already." Sherlock says irritably, clamping his mouth shut as another convulsion shakes his body.

John allows himself a very small, very private smirk. His reaction has evidently already been completely mapped out in Sherlock's head as his flatmate whirls around in a flurry of expensive coat to glare at him accusingly.

"You're a doctor, you –hic!- fix people. Fix me!"

"There isn't a cure," John tells him, manfully keeping as straight a face as he can muster, "You'll just have to wait it out."

Sherlock rakes his hands through his unruly hair in impotent frustration. "How am I supposed to –hic!- _think_ with this –hic!- racket going on, John!"

* * *

><p>Told you they'd be short and unfinished!<p> 


	3. Theatrics

One week Sherlock has a cold and of course proceeds to be terribly melodramatic about it, sneezing theatrically here and going into exaggerated coughing fits there and generally making a damned nuisance of himself, in John's opinion.

The next week he is knifed whilst chasing a petty jewellery thief – hardly worth his time – and doesn't even mention it until John notices with an exclamation how white Sherlock has gone and how hard his hand is pressed to the seeping dark stain on his jacket.

In the following months John gets a revenge of sorts by catching the flu, bringing Sherlock to the abrupt and unpleasant realisation that the milk does not replenish itself and that _someone_ needs to stock up on loo rolls every once in a while. Sherlock in a supermarket is not an image that John can readily imagine, although he takes great amusement in doing so, and he tactfully avoids the subject every time the detective returns baleful and exasperated from the shops ("Does that dullard of a cashier honestly not realise that his girlfriend's sleeping with his father? It's blindingly obvious from the state of his shirt collar!").

* * *

><p>...Short but sweet? :P<p>

Reviews make my day!


	4. Christmas Spirit

"Sherlock," John says abruptly, the thought dawning on him for the first time yet suddenly becoming very obviously true, "Do you actually _know_ the story of the Nativity?"

There is a very long silence. John is just about to laugh with amazement when Sherlock harrumphs.

"Of course I do, John, don't be absurd. What do you take me for?"

John wisely chooses to ignore that question and instead prompts him to continue. "Go on, then."

There is another prolonged pause. "...It involves shepherds."

"This is unbe_lie_vable!" An incredulous laugh bursts from John's mouth, Sherlock looking increasingly surly.

"Will it help me catch criminals? No. It's irrelevant. I probably deleted it years ago."

"That's what you said about astronomy." John points out reasonably as he goes to pour a cup of tea from the freshly-boiled kettle. The grumpy silence indicates that Sherlock seems to have no answer for him, so his flatmate takes advantage of this and proceeds to tell him the Nativity story – punctuated, of course, by Sherlock's many scathing criticisms and scoffs of disbelief.

–

"...So they travelled to Nazareth and made it their home. The end."

Sherlock sits in thoughtful silence, steepling his fingertips beneath his chin and staring into space, but just as John is starting to think he's made an impression-

"Teenager has an affair, tries to cover it up by saying she was _impregnated by God_, nine months later delusional old men follow a particularly bright star to harass the new mother and a cult leader is born."

"It's an _iconic story!_" John protests, giggling a little despite himself. "You can't just-"

"I can and I will." Sherlock says decisively, dismissing the matter with an airy wave of the hand. "And anyway, I was right – that farce of a tale couldn't help me with a case if my client were the baby Jesus himself."

* * *

><p>Sherlock and religion don't work well together, at a guess.<p> 


	5. Bees

It's June, and they're on a train to one of the rare cases outside of London that Sherlock has actually decided to take. Normally he turns them down immediately, claiming that the sooty London air is better for his health – though John suspects that he just can't bear the quiet of the countryside – but this one is unusual enough to satisfy even Sherlock's refined tastes. John isn't up to speed with all the details but he did hear some vague words thrown at him in passing about 'limbs strewn all over the fields', which does sound like the kind of case that Sherlock loves. However any further attempts to extract information from him are in vain; the detective is slumped darkly brooding in the window seat, no doubt busy drawing up and rejecting a dozen different theories before he has even examined the crime scene.

John stares out of the window too after a while, losing himself in the swathes of soft green hills rolling by which suggest to him that they're somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales. Nearly there, then.

"I might retire to the countryside one day." Sherlock announces out of nowhere, pulling John abruptly from his thoughts.

"_You?_" The doctor snorts, not quite managing to repress his grin, "Sherlock, you hate the countryside."

"I do right now, yes. It's boring, stagnant and..."

"Peaceful? Relaxing?"

"Sickeningly bucolic." Sherlock says with a sneer, but continues, "However, in forty years' time London might well have lost a good deal of its appeal for me."

"Why?" John asks, fascinated. He receives a sideways glance.

"Mycroft will still be living there."

John snorts again, but this time into his polystyrene cup of tea, and whilst he is mopping up the resulting mess Sherlock adds, "I thought I might keep bees."

"Bees?"

"Yes, bees. Small striped insects of the family _Apoidea_-"

"Yes, yes, all right." The shorter man takes a breath and considers how best to respond to this rather incongruous and hitherto unvoiced ambition of Sherlock's. "Hmm, bees. I suppose..." Another thoughtful pause. "I suppose you'd keep a spare suit for whenever I'd visit? Hat, gloves, the works? Don't much fancy getting stung."

Sherlock arches a dark brow. "Don't be stupid, John. You won't be visiting me when we're older."

"Oh." John blinks several times, not quite sure what to say next. "Er... no, of course not. Sorry, shouldn't have assumed..."

"You'll be living with me, of course." A slight smile. "I can't keep bees by myself."

* * *

><p>Here, have some lemon juice. It will counter the sugar and fluffiness of this fic.<p> 


	6. Seven Facts: Sherlock

1. Sherlock won't say 'bless you' if you sneeze. He thinks that it's a ridiculous and outdated pagan custom, and if you pick him up on it will submit you to a brief yet acidic lecture upon the fact.

2. After watching an old Frankenstein film together one evening, John was only able to dissuade Sherlock from stitching together his _own_ creature from the various body parts lying around the flat by threatening to tell Mycroft. After which Sherlock sulked for a week and then deleted the film from his memory.

3. Sherlock rarely remembers birthdays. A couple of years he's even forgotten that it's his own.

4. Sherlock has never learned to drive. Not because he wouldn't be perfectly good at it, or because he lacks the money for lessons, but for the simple reason that all of that knowledge would have to take the place of something absolutely vital, like the decomposition rate of a body when left out at exactly room temperature.

5. He has never really understood why John has strictly forbidden him from informing Anderson's wife of her husband's extra-curricular activities with Sergeant Donovan. He especially doesn't see why he isn't allowed to explain why Anderson prefers Donovan over her. It'd be for her own good.

6. When Sherlock was thirteen he was very nearly expelled for unintentionally melting a hole through the linoleum flooring of the Chemistry classroom. His defence? He was testing to see if a combination of weaker alkalis, such as toothpaste and washing powder, would neutralise a stronger acid - such as the hydrochloric acid locked securely away in the teacher's storeroom. It didn't.

7. After Lestrade's impromptu and highly uncalled for drugs bust, Sherlock's stash of not-exactly-legal substances is concealed somewhere so secret that even the omnipresent Mycroft hasn't found it. Yet.

* * *

><p>There were going to be ten facts, but inspiration drought hit after the seventh fact and I'm going away for a few days without internet so I wanted to get it posted up. So on that basis there very well might be another little chapter like this when I think of some more facts.<p> 


	7. Boundaries

John has tolerated the loud bangs and awful rotten-egg stenches that diffuse slowly and nastily throughout the flat.

He has turned a blind eye to the fingernails floating merrily in every bottle of the six-pack of Stella he had bought only that morning.

Hell, he's even put up with Sherlock experimenting on _him_, sitting still in resignation whilst the other man paws through his hair with occasional exclamations of 'aha' or 'thought so'.

What John will _absolutely not, a hundred percent not tolerate, Sherlock_ is the gently decomposing corpse that he finds waiting for him in his bed one horrible evening. The absolute lack of respect and propriety is what finally makes him snap, I mean _my god, it's like something out of the bloody Godfather, what the hell were you thinking? Don't you have any concept of personal boundaries?_

When Sherlock replies in the negative John grabs the corpse and dumps it onto Sherlock's bed, rips all the sheets from his own bed and has the bill from the most expensive dry-cleaners in London charged to Sherlock's bank account.

And then two days later he switches a select few of the detective's chemicals around, so that when Sherlock next goes to mix a simple pickling solution there is a sudden blast and his eyebrows are singed off.


	8. Brothers

Mycroft was born a miniature adult, mature and well-behaved and dreadfully, dreadfully polite.

Sherlock was what we may kindly term a difficult child, every day a temper tantrum or an upset neighbour or glowering black silence.

.

Mycroft never received anything less than a perfect grade, naturally.

Sherlock achieved a rebellious mixture of As and Es, depending on whether he thought the subject matter worth remembering and on how many experiments he had going on the side.

.

Mycroft had a group of friends all very similar in nature – rich, double-barrelled and well connected.

Sherlock wasn't bullied – his brother saw to that – but there was never really anyone that he would have considered as a friend.

.

Mycroft graduated with a First from Oxford and was immediately head-hunted by several important government officials.

Sherlock was kicked out of Cambridge halfway through his second year for exposing one too many extra-marital affairs amongst the Fellows of his college.

.

Sherlock lives in a cluttered but cosy flat with his closest friend and spends most of his days running around the city and doing what he loves best.

Mycroft eats a solitary sandwich at his desk, and lives alone.

* * *

><p><strong>Apologies for the random full stops. I wanted to separate each little couplet, but the formatting is being weird and it was the only way I could do it.<strong>


	9. Five Facts: John

1. To this day, whenever John Watson sleeps in a tent he wakes up with the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire ringing in his ears and the lingering taste of hot metal in his mouth and a gritty, uncomfortable feeling as if he'll never quite be able to get rid of the grains of desert sand lodged between his toes.

2. The most disgusting thing that he's ever eaten was something left in the fridge that he had thought was marmalade. One look at Sherlock's face upon seeing the half-empty jar told him that it wasn't, and after throwing up several times in the loo John still isn't sure if he wants to know what was actually in that jar.

3. John stays far away from anything at all like Call Of Duty. He just can't understand why anyone would want to take the past few years of his life and turn the whole awful, dirty, bloody experience into a game.

4. In the six months that he's been living with Sherlock, John has been shot once and shot _at_ countless times. He has been chased, threatened, bribed, blackmailed, beaten up and wired to a bomb. He's fallen into the Thames (Sherlock _insists_ it was an accident, though John later found some obscure and messy notes on velocity and trajectory lying around in the flat) and has been on the business end of several rather unpleasant people's fists.

All in all, John imagines that he'd probably be safer back in Afghanistan.

5. John is not by nature a violent man, but if he ever runs into Moriarty again he'd cheerfully shoot him dead on the spot - for the innocent lives taken, for wiring John himself up to that bomb, but most of all for the shattered look on Sherlock's face when he had thought for those few horrible moments at the pool that John was the villain of the piece.

* * *

><p>It was going to be seven facts, but inspiration drought has struck again and I leave for university in under a week so wanted to publish it before that. Bite me.<p>

Reviews are always welcome.


	10. Incompatibility

Harry and Sherlock took a healthy dislike to each other from the moment they met.

Well.

To be more precise - Harry almost punched Sherlock after he deduced within five minutes of their introduction that she obviously hadn't moved on from Clara and told her that she should stop mixing her drinks so much if she didn't want to end up in hospital again. John had never quite been able to smooth over Harry's ruffled feathers from that incident, and Sherlock maintained that he had just been trying to give her some well-intentioned advice (_"If she's in trouble, that'll distract you, John. I need your full focus for our cases!"_).

John can deal with their antipathy as long as there are no dust-ups in public. But occasionally he does allow himself the unlikely hope that his sister and his flatmate-partner-colleague-friend might some day get along.

* * *

><p>Reviews andor title suggestions for this little chappie are welcome. You may have noticed I'm not very imaginative when it comes to titling these things.


	11. In Which Sherlock Is Not Always Right

Sally Donovan really bloody hates all the assumptions people make about her.

The rumour that she's shagging Anderson, for one. New cars aren't exactly cheap, and when the dealership started demanding the payment Sally was forced to swallow her pride and accept the humiliating offer from Anderson of cleaning his house for a couple of evenings a week. So yes, she actually _had_ been scrubbing his floors until an ungodly hour, and so what if she'd sneakily used some of his deodorant to cover the sweat she'd worked up? She hadn't realised it would _linger_ so.

She just wishes that Sherlock freaking Holmes would stop announcing his stupid theories to anyone within bragging distance.

Besides, _Anderson?_

If she were going to have an affair with any of her superiors, she'd definitely pick Lestrade.


	12. Bah, Humbug

One Christmas Mycroft sends Sherlock a first-edition set of beautifully illustrated leather-bound books on human anatomy. Sherlock sends Mycroft a bookmark and a box of toothpicks.

The next year, knowing that Sherlock can't and won't be bothered to make his way through the snow to stock up on boring necessities such as food, the older Holmes brother has a Fortnum & Mason's hamper ordered in to 221B Baker Street. Sherlock ignores most of the food until it has expired, and sends his brother a WeightWatchers membership card.

The following year John is here, and firmly refuses to allow his friend to send Mycroft a packet of paperclips or a toenail clipper. He drags Sherlock out onto the streets of London to look for something that he thinks Mycroft might actually appreciate – and John will know if Sherlock deliberately picks something that his brother will hate. There is much complaining and impatience, and an air of dark resentment tinges the whole affair, but eventually Sherlock settles on a gift of his own choosing.

Mycroft receives in the post an unassuming dark blue scarf: knitted, warm, expensive. The very same scarf, in fact, that he has just bought to give to Sherlock.

* * *

><p>What do you guys think of this one? I'm in two minds about it.<p>

(Sorry for my lack of updates - I'm now at university and rather busy! I will still update but not quite as frequently...)


	13. Five Things Sherlock Doesn't Understand

1. Euphemisms. Silly little expressions like 'passed on' or 'went to a better place'. Everyone knows that what they all mean is 'dead', so why not just say that?

2. The whole notion of personal privacy. If John only hides something under a pile of socks at the back of a locked drawer, he shouldn't be upset in the slightest when Sherlock has come across it within days. Child's play.

3. Small talk. Sherlock is quite content to sit in silence, and actually would rather do that - mind free to wander onto an infinitely more interesting subject, such as what he should write his next monograph upon - than make lame conversation about the weather or whichever team is currently best at kicking a ball around a field.

4. Birthday parties. Why does society consider it such a momentous achievement to have breathed through another year?

5. John's obsessive and ridiculous need for a tidy flat, and his refusal to accept some extremely interesting and potentially useful mould growing on a forgotten loaf of bread as 'clean'. He doesn't really understand why John insists on such cleanliness - perhaps it's to do with him being a doctor - but Sherlock reluctantly complies in order to avoid having to find a new flatmate.

* * *

><p>Hello, dearest readers... it's been a while! What do you think of my latest offering? Any suggestions - which I may or may not be inspired by - for future mini-fics?<p> 


	14. Breakfast at the Holmes'

The longer John takes to eat breakfast, the more impatient Sherlock gets. A bowl of cereal has him threatening to shoot more holes in the wall, buttered toast with jam has him threatening to shoot a hole in _John_ and on the single occasion that John cooked himself a morning fry-up, he had turned around from the oven to find that Sherlock had already left the flat and taken a taxi to the crime scene.

Sherlock, on the other hand, is a bloody nightmare when it comes to anything involving him and food and him eating food. Despite his insistence that he really can get by on coffee and nicotine patches alone, his flatmate unfortunately happens to be a rather competent doctor and knows otherwise. John is quite willing to stand over him all day as Sherlock harrumphs and glares and oozes resentment if it means that the detective will eat a decent meal for once.

Sometimes John gets desperate and calls on Mrs. Hudson to bring a cosy equilibrium to the scene. She is the only person he knows who can juggle five pots and pans around the stove at once and at the same time be able to make Sherlock sit moodily down to tea and toast for two. John thanks his lucky stars for the Mrs. Hudsons ("Still not your housekeeper!") of the world.

* * *

><p><strong>Thanks go to akisura12, who provided the original inspiration for this little fic, and ToffeeRose who brainstormed with me on how best to word things and is generally awesome. ;D<strong>


	15. Perspective

"You treat me differently." Sherlock said unexpectedly and almost accusingly into the peaceful silence governing the flat.

John tugged himself out of his crossword. "Sorry, I'll stop."

"No, don't. It's good-different."

Silence.

"Good-different… how, exactly?"

Sherlock tapped the microscope he was squinting through. "Most people view me as a science experiment. Lestrade pokes me to see what I'll do next and I suspect that Mrs. Hudson thinks I'm a friendly alien."

"Hm." John shifted in his seat. "Ahem. I don't think you're an experiment."

"I know. It's… refreshing. You treat me like I'm a real person."

"Well, you are-"

"Don't be silly, of course I'm not," Sherlock said impatiently, flapping a dismissive hand as if the question of his humanity had long been decided. But then he looked up and graced John with one of his rare, genuine smiles, like the sun blazing out from behind a cloud for only the briefest moment. "but having someone think that about me is rather nice."

* * *

><p><strong>Hello, my dear and loyal readers! I have no excuse for not updating this in a year except that I had a lot to do (and still do). But I was reading through this and remembered how much fun it was to write these. So I tried another. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be updated regularly again (see profile for explanation). But I hope you enjoy :)<strong>

**~Featherz**


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